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Brain Stew

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu word problem:

If there are a million techniques in Jiu-Jitsu, and each of those techniques has a thousand variations, and each of those variations has a hundred details, how many brain cells are required to store the information?

Math isn’t my strongest subject, but if I’ve done my calculations correctly, the answer is ninety-nine brazillion, which I believe is a few more than I currently have available. My brain cells are already full of vital information that I’ve accumulated throughout my life, such as lyrics to songs I don’t even like, and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, which I memorized over thirty-five years ago, and can still recite by heart. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to move those files to the trash bin in my brain, to make room for the new BJJ downloads.

Hell, if I had known that someday I would need a bunch of healthy brain cells to learn Jiu-Jitsu, maybe I wouldn’t have destroyed so many of them in my wilder days! However, I’ve heard that keeping your mind engaged in learning can help to create new brains cells, so even though BJJ sometimes makes me feel stupid for not being able to remember and make sense of everything, it’s actually making me smarter!

My preamble to the BJJ Constitution:

We the people of Jiu-Jitsu, in order to form a more perfect fighting system, establish dominance, ensure technical purity, provide for our self-defense, promote the grappling lifestyle, and secure the blessings of rolling for ourselves and our academy, do establish and declare that the ground is our ocean, we are the sharks, and most people don’t even know how to swim.